Stronger Than Steel
by Animegirl1129
Summary: In which Peter can't bring himself to leave Hemlock Grove and Roman's heart is not nearly as vulnerable as some people think. Rated for language,


Stronger Than Steel

_******SPOILERS FOR SEASON FINALE. **Written in response to love_bingo prompt: mourning, hc_bingo prompt: therapy. Rated for canonical language. First Hemlock Grove fic, written in the rage that came with ending the season - demanded to be fixed! Pardon typos because I can hear birds outside my window. Characters not mine, please enjoy! Comments are awesome._

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Roman is still standing in the midst of the abandoned trailer that once housed the only true friend he ever had. It's still registering, slowly, like a knife to the gut as it twists and turns with wicked curves and sharp edges. Peter can't be gone. He _needs_ Peter and he's never _needed_ anybody before. He can't be gone, that can't be how this works, how it ends. He can't lose anyone else.

His mother is silent, where she still lurks outside the graffitied trailer, looking seriously out of place amongst the dead leaves and dirt. She says nothing, hasn't said anything since she asked him what - who - he needed. She's silent, but he can still hear the unsaid 'I told you so,' that she's undoubtedly thinking.

And he wishes he could tell her she was wrong.

"Fucking gypsies," he spits, as he finally admits a painful defeat and makes for the door, kicking it as he steps back outside and pointedly ignoring the sting behind his eyes and the ache in his chest.

"My darling," Olivia says softly, a soothing hand on his shoulder as they make their way back up the wooden stairs that lead from the road. He wipes his eyes and tries, like everyone keeps telling him, to make his heart steel.

But that's when he hears the squeal of tires.

The crappy tan sedan comes into view a second later, loaded down with boxes, and it pulls to a stop just a few yards away from the black SUV they drove here in. Peter's scrambling out of the passenger's side a second later, staggering toward Roman the same way he'd staggered into that damned empty trailer. He looks weird, with all of his hair chopped off, but fuck if Roman cares.

"I'm sorry," Peter says. "I'm sorry. I couldn't do it, couldn't leave."

"You asshole," he answers, marching the few steps left between them and throwing a punch that Peter manages to catch before it lands. "You fucking asshole!" He swings again, and Peter gets hold of that arm, too, holds on while Roman fights him until he finally gives in and stops. They're mostly just a tangle of flailing limbs then, but at some point it shifts to a legitimate hug, one they both needed, and they're both crying for the losses they've shared.

Roman holds on to Peter tighter than he ever has anything in his life. His fingers curl into fists in the fabric of Peter's jacket until they're white-knuckled and won't unbend themselves. He doesn't even realize he's done that.

"I'm not going anywhere," Peter tells him, promises him, the words whispered so that no one else can hear.

And he thinks he believes that.

Roman's gaze shifts to his mother, who he can see just over Peter's shoulder, and notes the enraged, almost disgusted look on her face. For a second he wonders if she made Peter leave, or at least tried to. She certainly hadn't seemed to expect him to be here. And it's not like it's something she wouldn't do, either, if it suited her needs.

And then something in him wonders if she is what he's supposed to steel his heart to.

It certainly isn't Peter. Of that he is sure, despite his moment of doubt.

Sometimes he thinks Peter is the only one keeping him sane, human.

"Peter," Lynda calls, still standing by the driver's side door of the old beater. "If we're staying..."

"We're staying," Peter answers quickly, before she's barely finished the word. He pulls away from the hug, but one of his hands still clings to Roman's arm. "We have to stay."

She smiles, accepting of this where Olivia is clearly not pleased by the news. "Okay. I'll just start unloading boxes, then."

"We'll help," Roman volunteers, knowing that Peter was about to say the same thing. "But could Peter stay with me? For a few days?"

A nod, one of complete understanding, comes, and the boys wander over to the back of the car, where cardboard boxes have been haphazardly shoved in their rush to leave.

"Thank you," he says to Peter's mother, words that he hardly even uses, because she could have denied him that, hell, she could have just kept driving and gotten Peter out of Hemlock Grove, whether or not he'd wanted to come back.

Another smile from her, kind and loving, a gentle hand on his shoulder as she passes him a box.

Roman notes, with some degree of pleasure, that his mother looks furious.

When they've finished piling all of the boxes back in the trailer and said their goodbyes to Lynda, Roman hauls Peter to the car, an anxious "come on," spills from his lips. He feels like something is going to happen again, and whatever that something is, he's sure he'll need Peter for it.

He drives the three of them back to the Godfrey mansion even though it doesn't really feel like home anymore, with all of the ghosts it has now. They go to the empty pool and smoke, unwilling to go to the attic with all of the memories it holds.

"I thought it'd be better if I left," Peter admits, passing the joint back to Roman, who's sitting right next to him, pressed together from shoulder to knee on the pool's edge. "Safer for us, for you, without me riling up the townsfolk. I thought... but I was wrong. We barely made it over the town line before something felt off. I guess I need you around more than I thought I did."

"You can fucking say that again," Roman replies, after a long, long drag. "When you weren't there, I-"

And that's apparently all he needs to say for Peter to know just how much that hurt him. He cuts him off with the sudden press of lips on lips, which he looks just as surprised about as Roman does. It's quick, over before it even starts until Roman pulls him back in. It's rough and intense and it's something neither of them knew they actually wanted until right now.

"Fuck," he groans, dropping the last remnants of his smoke to the bottom of the pool when his teeth catch Peter's bottom lip as he pulls away, drawing blood that he sucks into his own mouth without thinking. A second later, he realizes and thinks to ask, "not gonna turn, am I?"

"Think you're immune," Peter replies, "cause of your brain ninja powers."

Roman laughs and kisses him again.

"Ahem," a noise startles the both of them into breaking apart. Olivia is standing there, and if she'd been furious earlier, Roman doesn't even have words to describe the look on her face now. "If you'll come with me for a moment, darling," she says, but 'darling' sounds more like a curse than anything else and Roman feels a sort of fear coil in his gut that only intensifies when she amends it with, "Alone."

"I don't-" he starts, but she cuts him off with a fierce 'now!' that has him scrambling to his feet. "Stay here," he tells Peter, following after her.

She leads him upstairs and into what has always been Shelley's room in the attic. There's a crib there, now, but he doesn't understand why until he hears the crying. "The baby," he says, rather obviously. "She's alive?"

"Yes," his mother answers, impatiently urging him closer. "She's waiting to meet her father."

He stares at her in confusion. "Me? I'm not... I didn't..." but then she looks into his eyes and makes him remember. The Angel. It was him. The memories hit him like a train, flipping everything he thought he knew into chaos and leaving him spinning to find his way back. How could he... how could he do that? How could he not remember? "No, no, no..."

"You know what you are," she says, "what we are." She pricks the baby with a pin, brings it to her lips and tastes the blood. "You can't stop it."

"No, no, no!" Roman chants over and over. "I won't! I'll never hurt her," he says.

But his shouting must've drawn Peter's attention because he's hovering in the doorway, looking on in shocked confusion when he sees the crib. "What's-" he starts, but Olivia locks eyes with him, too, and he drops to his knees.

"You have caused enough problems," she says, "you were supposed to be long gone. But I suppose I'll have to deal with you myself."

But Roman has never been good with people threatening Peter. His own eyes flash with power and he's between his mother and his best friend in a second. "You won't hurt him, either."

And then Peter's choking on nothing, grabbing at his throat and looking to Peter for help. But he can't. Olivia is too strong to fall victim to his powers, so he does the only thing he can think of, and gropes through his pocket for his razor blade. "Stop," he says, backing toward the crib. "I'll do it. Just stop."

And Peter stops choking, but she must keep him from talking, moving because Roman has no doubt that he'd be doing both if he could. Olivia turns to him.

"You don't win," he tells her, before he raises the blade to his forearm, cutting vertically down from elbow to wrist, then doing the same on the other so there's no chance it won't kill him. Alarmingly, she doesn't seem overly concerned by his attempt at self-sacrifice, but Peter's eyes are blown wide in fear when he realizes what he's done.

It must be enough to break Olivia's hold on him because he clambers to his feet and scrambles across the room to where Roman can feel himself falling as the blood cascades down his arms in immeasurable amounts. "Roman," he's saying, catching him before he can hit the ground, cradling his head in his lap. "Roman, don't do this. Not now." Peter rocks against him, dragging a hand through his hair, even as the seconds tick into minutes and the color fades from Roman's skin and his eyes slip closed. "No, no, nononono!"

As impossible as it seems with the heavy rivulets of blood that have flowed across the floor, Roman suddenly gasps and sits up, clutching desperately at the arm that Peter has curled around him. He knows what he is now, though. Who he is. And what he has to do. He flexes his jaw, runs his tongue along the sharp canines that have replaced his dull teeth. There are scars up his arms, where just a few moments ago there was fresh blood.

"Roman," Peter says, the word a careful measure in the silence that has fallen in the room. It grounds him.

Roman slowly gets to his feet and approaches the crib. Olivia slithers up behind him, runs a hand over his face, as she tells him, "I always win," in a voice that says she believes she has. He's come back, a victim of his own hand, as he knows now that he had to, but that doesn't mean he is what she wants him to be. His heart is protected by something stronger than steel when it comes to her, as it has to be, if he's giving it to Peter.

If Peter even wants it after this.

"Do it," she says, nodding to the baby, who's fallen silent.

And he does.

He does what he has to in order to keep Peter and the baby safe. His teeth latch onto Olivia's neck and she jolts in surprise, screaming as they go down hard. He holds on until she stops fighting, stops squirming, and only then does he let up, staring down at her in contempt.

"I'm... proud of you," she says, her voice strained and weak as the life flows out of her.

For a second, he imagines silencing her once and for all. Ripping out her tongue so she can't fuck with him, his mind, his life, ever again.

"Roman?" Peter says again, a hand reaching out to him.

But he doesn't have to. She'll be silent soon enough, and he'll prove her pride in him wrong when he proves that he's nothing like her. There's one last rattle of breath and then Olivia is gone. "Yeah," he says, calmly, as he moves away from his mother's body to catch that hand in his own.

Peter stops to pick up the baby, who's crying again, and the three of them rush downstairs and into Roman's room just to get away from the damnable attic. The little girl curls into Peter's arms and goes to sleep nearly immediately, while Roman sheds blood soaked clothing and does his best to get the rancid taste of Olivia's blood out of his mouth. When he's done, he sits down beside Peter and out, runs a hand through the light dusting of hair on his daughter's head. She's theirs now. Would have been Peter's, if Letha had lived. Is Roman's, though he's not planning on sharing that secret with anyone. Theirs.

A long silence passes between them, until Peter finally breaks it with a quiet, "You okay?"

"Depends," Roman counters, eyes flicking over Peter's face in search of an answer. "You afraid of me?"

"Should be," he says, with a shrug. "But I'm not."

And he seems to find whatever it is he's looking for, because he manages a half-smile and leans in, kissing Peter again - which is a whole new experience with heightened _upir_ senses - and says, "good. Couldn't do this without you."

"I'm not going anywhere," Peter says, another whispered promise that Roman has no doubt he will keep.


End file.
